Now I teach them a little differently than the traditional way and the traditional way has been accumulated over centuries and The five skandhas are five separate minds. And the five skandhas are also the four constituents of the fifth skandha which is consciousness. Now I don't know enough unable to study the history of the development of the skandhas as constituents in Sanskrit.

[01:06]

But it seems to me to make them to make them understandable to let them furrow as constituents, they rather intellectualize. Let me give you a very simple example. experiential way to look at them first. And a way for you to practice them, yes, somewhat effortlessly. At least if you do Zazen. When you do Zazen, When you start zazen, you're in consciousness.

[02:30]

I mean, you're doing something, you know, somewhere in your house or zendo or someplace. So you sit down in the midst of consciousness. And as you find your posture, and settle into not moving, and establish some physical stillness, consciousness tends to dissolve. And then what you have is what I call associative mind.

[03:34]

And just things, it's the same mind we dream in, primarily in the mind. And there's various things that come up. Various associations. And nobody knows exactly what to call it. I call it associative mind. D.T. Suzuki calls it confection. Yes, something put together. but confection in English is also a word for pastry not necessarily an Austrian pastry but a pastry confection [...] sometimes it's called impulses and so forth

[04:39]

Because organizationally it is a mind in which associations occur, and those associations can become impulses and then become conscious. But now I'm emphasizing it's separate from consciousness and it's just association. And if you do zazen, it's quite fruitful to allow a kind of relaxed attentiveness, explore associations as they come up.

[05:56]

But there's not only associations, there's different kinds of spaces which are part and parcel of the association. So now I'm teaching or presenting something about Zazen. Different kinds of spaces appear in this associated mind. and different configurations of associations appear.

[06:59]

Sometimes it's like a series of rooms, or simultaneously arrayed rooms, Yeah, and so you might see one room through another room way back. But you can actually learn how to pull that distant room up. So there's foreground-background relationships. And it actually becomes a way you can examine topics.

[08:00]

So there's bundles of associations, clusters of associations. And there's associations hidden behind associations and you can look around the corner So it becomes a way to examine the content of mind and experience in a more thorough and wider way than you can in consciousness. Yeah, because once these same contents appear in consciousness, they're organized into the way you know the world and what you have to do and so forth. And so you get to look at the background of the foreground of the mind.

[09:17]

But you get to look at the background of the foreground of consciousness. And so in some ways, in associative mind, The background of conscious mind becomes the foreground within associative mind. This is quite useful, quite interesting. The third khanda here is what I call percept-only mind.

[10:25]

And traditionally, at least by some dear persons, this mind is more like what I'm saying about And you are now seeing percepts in contrast to the background from which percepts arise. But I think experientially, And what I emphasize is the background is fixed. So percept-only mind becomes a way to notice percepts.

[11:28]

Well, you experience percepts in a kind of purity. As I've often said, I use the example of hearing. In other words, for those of you who haven't heard me say that before, I mean you're hearing your own hearing. Okay, so, again, continuing the same example. If you hear a bird, you're not really hearing the bird. You're hearing your own hearing of the bird. And you, in fact, cannot hear what other birds hear. We simply cannot hear the complexity of bird sounds.

[12:43]

They have a wider range and more songbirds and more notes per unit of sound than we can discern. Some birds, one bird can sing simultaneous notes. So we're not hearing what, in a sense, the bird intends another bird to hear. We hear only what our apparatus allows us to hear. And it's interesting, you know, we would call the ear kind of physical object. But in Buddhism you don't separate the physical ear from the hearing.

[13:52]

It's not a thing like the nose. It's a form of hearing. So this is part of the emphasis on things are activities and not entities. The here isn't an entity. It's part of the activity of hearing. So it's a form of hearing, not a form of an object. Now I mention this only to keep reminding us these differences and how you can distribute the categories of knowing. Ich erinnere uns jetzt daran, wie wir diese Kategorien des Kennens verteilen können. One of the interesting things, and I pointed it out too often, is when you hear your own hearing, it often accompanied my experience of bliss.

[15:03]

So the third skandha becomes not only about the person and the exploration of the pure perception Like you see only what your eyes can see, you hear only what your ears can hear, etc. But also the establishment of percept-only. also establishes the space in which the only is space, percept only, the only is space.

[16:19]

So it becomes a way to establish sensorial space. A sensorial space in which hearing occurs, seeing occurs, and so forth. And the space becomes part of the hearing. And the seeing becomes part of the... The space becomes part of seeing. And so forth. Okay. Okay. The second standard is Vedana. It's most commonly described as Painful, pleasurable, and neutral sensations.

[17:34]

But the essence of it is neutral. And I think that, so for me, it's most functional to describe the second standard as a non-graspable feeling. And again, you've heard me speak about the mentioned non-grasp feeling. As a feeling which is always present if you are loved. You may not be able to speak or or be conscious in coma, but there's feeling.

[18:42]

When there's no feeling, you're probably dead. Okay. So, for an example, Right now in this room, there is a certain feeling. And it's a feeling that is slightly different than when I first came in the room. And different from when Gisela came into the room. And different when before and after Horst changed his position. So the feeling, you can't grasp it, but it's minutely responsive.

[19:52]

And as I say, it's the medium of most of what's happening in this room. the medium of most of what's happening in this room. Most of the basis for most of the information, even of what you're hearing, is in that non-versatile people. Now, okay, then the first skanda is form. And form... primarily is understood as, I think the simplest thing to say is its appearance.

[20:54]

Form doesn't mean matter. And it doesn't mean molecules. It means matter which you can sense. It also has a sense of matter which resists. This floor resists my eyes seeing beyond the floor. Or these two things can't occupy the same space at the same time. Well, almost. So the separateness of each thing is also this sense of form. No, no, maybe I should look at the flip chart.

[22:13]

Would that be okay? When these five skandhas, and the word skandha means aggregate, or heaps, So often they're called five, in English you can translate it literally, the five heaps. And when they're aggregated, when they are an aggregate, all five, aggregate, put together, you have what in Buddhism is called an individual person. Hast du das, was im Buddhismus ein Individuum oder eine Person genannt wird? But you notice there's no, in this sense of agency or an observer or self that's doing this.

[23:14]

Aber du bemerkst, dass in diesen ganzen Dingen kein Akteur, kein Selbst oder irgendetwas, was tut, drinnen ist. So, it looks like we're going to have to deal with what... What is here is not met by the observer or actor at some other time than just now. These, again, have nothing to do with Asia, Buddhism, or yoga.

[24:18]

That's us. The persuasive aspects of self. And here's the fifth, the five, dimensions of being that a Bodhisattva is not being. Now... Vielleicht sollte ich in die Komödie, Richtung Komödie gehen. So I prefer to... What is done is with consciousness at the top.

[25:56]

Because of the dynamic... I know you should give the Sanskrit words. So, Vijnana is... has other extended meanings but we could just use it now as consciousness. But I would prefer to call it conscious mind. And the second And the fourth skandha is samskara.

[26:59]

And typically in Buddhism These words are used in many different lists. And in different lists they have rather different meanings. You can't make precise definitions of these things and carry them from list to list. You can't take a precise definition and transfer it from list to list. You will simply not find such definitions. So I prefer to call this associative mind.

[28:02]

And Samya is the third standard. And that's the same J-A-N-A as in jhana, as in jhana, which is zen, jhana, jhana, zen. This is that jhana. This is together knowing. So this together knowing is very close to associative mind. What I prefer to call this perceptual mind. And then the The second standard is Vedana, which I call Non-Greifbares Fühlen.

[29:22]

And the first standard is Which is form. And you can call it form mind. Or better would be form as appearance mind. Now, the reason I call each one a line, because you have horizontal links, as the book points out, you have horizontal links in the world as well as vertical links.

[30:45]

And by horizontal I mean it roots going this way as well as going this way. You have a world of experience and knowing in perceptions which has very little association with it. So as much as possible, the practice is the practice in which you are subtracting association. you subtract the association.

[31:49]

So, the dynamic of practicing these, if you start with consciousness, is, and if you use them as a way to go into Sazen, as you go in, each, each, The next standard becomes the subtraction from the previous standard. English isn't quite right, but I think we know. Now, the idea is here, is that when you perceive something, you actually first have an appearance.

[32:55]

And that appearance is followed by a feeling. And that feeling turns into a percept. The example I've often used is maybe somebody is out here walking and doesn't have to force much, but saying with the radio. And you hear something in the morning. And then you realize that it's not the forest. The sound is probably a radio. And you probably don't know what the song is. But you have a feeling that's an unreasonable feeling.

[33:56]

And then after a few moments you identify the song. I heard it on the grid, fine. And then, ah, that's a person. And you can just rest there. And just hear your own hearing. And so again, as I said, you don't have to hear the music of the spheres as an airplane perhaps will do. Sorry. Music of the Spirit, you know what that is. I don't know.

[35:12]

It's an expression from Greek times, I guess, of, you know, cosmic sound. Some idea that the planets make. So I'm just joking. So you hear an airplane. And you do not have to think that it's an airplane. In Krasnodar, the only airplane here are almost always flights to and from New York and Los Angeles. It's a straight line from New York between New York and Los Angeles, directly over us. And if they're flying from some other city, they're farther than Los Angeles. So you could think, oh, there's the Los Angeles flight.

[36:17]

But she can actually take away the labels. It's just the sound. It's amazing how much sound one airplane makes. You don't notice it in the city as much as in an airplane. In Cresto, there's no other sound. And as you know, the valley in front of us is the size of the state of Connecticut. And the whole sky is filled with the state of Connecticut. But really, you just hear the way the sky and the mountains make the sound.

[37:17]

So when you take the associations, take the labels off, you... you hear the sound, and you're hearing the sound, you're not really hearing anything. And when you get used to this experience, you can also, in other words, You can also find the same hearing in the middle of consciousness. It can occur within consciousness, but it's separate from consciousness. Although, as Christos pointed out, these are all included in consciousness.

[38:22]

But Vijñāna is not included in Samyā. Consciousness is not included in the links between the two consciousnesses. Okay. Now, Normally this happens extremely quickly. There's an appearance, feeling, perception, association and consciousness. And normally when there's a new perception or a new appearance, and you're already conscious.

[39:36]

The new percept is instantly absorbed into consciousness. then this new perception, let's make it simple, will be immediately absorbed into the consciousness. And you hardly notice it. Like in a city, walking around through Vienna in the daytime, there might be airplanes and automobiles and horse clocks clacking around, etc. And they're all just merged, you don't hear them separately. If you're quite close to something, you hear it separately, sort of separately.

[40:40]

But you hear it as part of consciousness. You don't hear it as a separate kind. So one of the most basic practices is to slow down this process. So it doesn't just happen in the consciousness. So you have to get used to establishing the mind of each of the skandhas. So, you know, I could draw this. So consciousness is like this.

[41:47]

And associative mind is like that. First step only mind is like that. And non-gratitude feeling is like that. And form is the whole... Sensory work. So in this way of looking at it, consciousness is the small enough, it's the edited, it's the consolidated experience of the work. What would you interpret? So, in general, you're walking, we're walking around in consciousness, and a whole lot of stuff's going on, which we're, you know, not noticing.

[42:56]

You could look at it the opposite way, too. You could turn this upside down. and you have a percept, which widens in the feeling, which widens into perceptions, which widens into associations, which widens and spreads out into consciousness. And I suppose that's what most people look at. As I say, neuroscientists, maybe the majority, tend to think of consciousness as the most inclusive of the experiences. But for the practitioner it's the most concentrated and even narrow of the experiences.

[44:09]

And from a Buddhist point of view, as soon as you release the conscious part, there's no longer a person. There's only the activities of perception, feeling, etc. It's not culturally, well, of course, it can't be somewhat culturally organized, but it's not culturally organized as consciousness. And So first of all, you learn, and I don't know how you could do this without meditation practice.

[45:15]

Because you need to learn to physically establish yourself in each of the skandhas. And in general, commanding role of consciousness. Commanding role being it's the commander of survival. better know how to survive and feed yourself, etc., in the last few days. So the commands of consciousness extend right down to the stars.

[46:17]

But the practitioner doesn't just experience the vertical roots that can land as a consciousness, but experiences the horizontal roots reaching into the world in all directions Prior, for example, to associations. The world of a tapestry of persons. And artists seem to experience the world more this way.

[47:31]

Okay, but once you get the feeling of each one, the embodiment of each one, you can begin to not only slow it down, you begin to no longer be the victim of your consciousness. Because you're constantly experiencing yourself constructing consciousness. So, say something, somebody says... something that hurts you. So-and-so who said you were so nice actually has written a letter to the government in Colorado saying you should be fired.

[48:37]

I've really just tried to get a variance. A variance of rules about where... fire rules, etc. Do you want to change it? It's called a variance. And they would save $4,000 a year or month or something like that in school. If they could move a gas tank about 50 feet closer to the school than it would be otherwise. It's a fire rule. But there's absolutely no danger. And she's on the fire department, so she knows there's no danger. But one of the political guys Who's dad has so much money, goes to schools and kills.

[49:56]

And starts shouting at her. You and that school are tettling the whole town and, you know, tettling. So, we just can't put, you know, Uh, the handset's again curled in here. So, I forget my world sheet. That's my in-speaker phone. So, so, so, so. Funny way he's hung up. So painful. It's angry for no reason and it's very good you didn't get angry.

[50:59]

When things like that happen, you realize it's going to take away the music program here because it's not going to be money for it. If you're in, then all of it is going to this. All fordundance. This is consciousness. And then there's other possibilities. It just doesn't hurt. The other possibility is false. When all this is false, your life hurts. Something's gone with it, etc. When you concentrate this in your consciousness, it is much more likely that you will get hurt, until you get hurt. But the practitioner, who is not here to practice, is not here to teach you and not in practice, but to slow them down, is not here to teach you and not in practice, but to slow them down, is not here to teach you and not in practice,

[52:13]

You feel the associations arising with all the changes. The word unconscious deceives me, and the West is both reasoning. Contents repress unconsciousness. But it's also used commonly to mean everything to me isn't conscious of. . With this practice, he simply becomes a part of all kinds of the effects.

[53:40]

Very conscious of your own actions. And kind of put together a person who has a reason to live the worst life possible. And also a starry butter. Also a starry butter. And you can say something else. You can pretend. You anyway, but how you wish. Wait, but how can be as wild as it is? Mice. clear as it is if you have these experiences. I think that's a confident introduction. There's a lot more I can say about it.

[54:47]

There's a lot more I can say about it. There's a lot more I can say about it. There's a lot more I can say about it. So what I suggest we do is... What shall we have? Asian topic, of course, is always whatever you have to talk about. But maybe suggestions help.

[56:00]

And I suppose we ought to make the suggestion that it's the five skandhas. And perhaps for those of you who have heard me talk about the five skandhas in the past Is there any particular aspect of the skandhas which has stayed with you from five years ago or some length of time ago? Is there one or more aspects which have stuck with you and been useful? Of course, this morning's use of language and to get under language could also be something to speak about.

[57:01]

It seems that it's helpful to have a talk back, I think. We're living in topics, you don't need any suggestions, but... The topic is now having a break. Thank you.

[57:30]

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